Openwave Systems has announced a collaboration with app store GetJar that will see Openwave integrate its Openwave Amplicity platform with GetJar’s app catalogue and publishing interface. The tie-up enables developers to write apps once and publish them in a single step across multiple platforms and across operators. The companies released the news a couple of days ago, but there were some aspects of it that were unclear, and we have only just received answers to the questions we posed.

Openwave Amplicity is an operator-facing platform that helps enable developers to leverage operator network assets to rapidly develop and deploy apps within the browser. Amplicity integrates with GetJar’s publisher interface to create a floating toolbar on the subscriber screen that can be populated with apps that don’t need to be downloaded to the handset. It enables operators to simplify the app discovery process by presenting a set of relevant apps to the user while browsing. Because the apps run in the browser, the user does not have to download, install, and manage these apps.

The apps are HTML5 apps that run inside the browser, or they could be bookmarks to mobile sites that look like apps, as many iPhone and Android apps on GetJar are. Users don’t have to be on the GetJar site to have apps recommended to them; they can be browsing any site. The choice of who is targeted with which apps is down to the mobile operator, and obviously, the app recommendation programme only works if the operator has deployed Openwave’s Amplicity platform.

“In the past, developers had been limited by platform restrictions, and it often did not make financial sense to write an application multiple times to different platform types,” says GetJar COO, Chris Dury. “The Openwave Amplicity/GetJar solution provides an alternate distribution model for developers to write their apps one time and widely distribute them through GetJar’s app store and publishing interface and maximize their monetization opportunities across operators.”